


Even Death Has A Heart

by ash_mcj



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Stiles, Child Abuse, Death, Death Pack, Death as a character, Demon Allison Argent, Demon Erica Reyes, Demon Isaac Lahey, Demon Scott McCall, Family Feels, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Grim Reaper Stiles Stilinski, Grim Reaper Theo Raeken, Grim Reapers, Hellhound Derek Hale, Hellhound Liam Dunbar, Hellhound Vernon Boyd, Hellhounds, Homophobia, Hurt Peter Hale, I like to think of this as a fluff fic disguised by darkness and death, Multi, POV Stiles Stilinski, Pack Feels, Paige & Stiles Stilinski are Twins, Peter Hale Deserves Nice Things, Peter Hale Needs a Hug, Phoenix Paige, Steter - Freeform, Stiles is Death, death au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-15 06:00:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28933668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ash_mcj/pseuds/ash_mcj
Summary: Perhaps I should introduce myself: I'm Stiles. You would probably know me better as Death, though I think it’s an odd concept to suggest that you know me at all--since I assure you, you do not. I make it a policy to avoid the living. Except in the case of Peter Hale, of course, but that was a happy accident. It was my only slip up.For some reason that I can’t quite understand, humans have a very specific way they think that I am.The truth is, I am not violent. I am not malicious. I am a result of your existence. I do not choose whose souls cannot stand to remain in the world any longer--I’m merely their companion to the next life. I do not carry a sickle or a scythe, though that would be awesome and maybe I should consider it. I don't don a hooded black robe, but sometimes when it’s cold, I'll wear my favorite red hoodie. Most importantly--I don’t have those skull-like facial features you seem to enjoy pinning on me.Because of the nature of my existence, this might seem like a sad story, but it isn’t. Not really. It’s a love story at its core. It’s life, death, and everything that happens in The Between, where a family of corrupted souls found a place to belong.
Relationships: Allison Argent/Lydia Martin, Derek Hale/Paige, Erica Reyes & Stiles Stilinski, Isaac Lahey/Scott McCall, Liam Dunbar/Theo Raeken, Paige & Stiles Stilinski, Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Vernon Boyd/Erica Reyes
Comments: 15
Kudos: 35





	1. the twin flames

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't put character death as a warning because it's literally a Death AU and everyone dies -- but it isn't looked at as a sad thing. It's not written in a way where you should feel loss. It's more like their lives actually start when they die.
> 
> This is simply another view of death that I haven't seen explored much in this fandom and I have a habit of writing whatever I can't find.

Things were different before I fell vehemently in love with Peter Hale. 

For a very long time, it was just Paige and I here in The Between. The spirit realm, if that’s easier to understand. The place where I pull your soul into after your body dies, and hand you off to my sister, a phoenix, whose fire purifies you and sends your refined soul back into a new body for you to spend a lifetime in - until you inevitably end up in my arms again one day and the cycle repeats itself for eternity. Paige thinks it’s beautiful. I think it’s depressing and more often than not, pointless. Maybe it’s just because we have different sides of the job.

Perhaps I should introduce myself: I'm Stiles. You would probably know me better as Death, though I think it’s an odd concept to suggest that you know me at all - since I assure you, you do not. I make it a policy to avoid the living. For some reason that I can’t quite understand, humans have a very specific way they think that I am.

The truth is, I am not violent. I am not malicious. I am a result of your existence. I do not choose whose souls cannot stand to remain in the world any longer - I’m merely their companion to the next life. I do not carry a sickle or a scythe, though that would be awesome and maybe I should consider it. I don't don a hooded black robe, but sometimes when it’s cold, I'll wear my favorite red hoodie. Most importantly - I don’t have those skull-like facial features you seem to enjoy pinning on me.

You want to know what I look like? Look in the mirror. I look just like you. Just like everyone else. I’m not sure if that’s comforting or not, but it’s the truth.

Paige and I came to existence here in The Between at the birth of humanity, so...perhaps that’s why we look human - you all were our reason for creation.

I would like to clear something up: there is no Heaven or Hell or Gods - though sometimes I wish there were. Some people deserve to be eternally punished or praised, but that’s just not how it works. The closest thing to the image of Hell might be The Between. There are Reapers, Hellhounds, Demons, and lots of passionate, lively fire. For a while, I think it would have fit the description a bit more, but the creatures I’ve acquired now stave off the loneliness of being eternally conscious and for the first time in a while, I’m happy. It’s not Heaven, but I think it might be better. Maybe I'm biased - I'm not really an 'angels and light' kind of guy.

Something to note here is that this story will not move linearly. A human doesn’t have a soul like mine. The human soul is a line, whereas my own is a circle, and I have the endless ability to be in the right place at the right time. Linear time is only a concept that takes place in the human realm, since your souls are caked in bodies that deteriorate.

As controversial of an idea as this might be: I am a firm believer that some people are not meant to be in the human realm. That their souls just don’t fit. That the world gives them nothing but heartbreak and trauma. The human realm doesn’t deserve these people. It can’t understand them the way I can. Their loneliness, their darkness. 

It was these people that I ended up stealing from the cycle to build my family. This was a human concept I admit to adopting. Peter Hale opened something inside of me that made me feel things I hadn’t thought could possibly exist in the darkness of my dark beating heart.

Because of the nature of my existence, this might seem like a sad story, but it isn’t. Not really. It’s a love story at its core. It’s life, death, and everything that happens in The Between, where a family of corrupted souls found a place to belong.


	2. Chapter 2

The first time that I saw Peter Hale, he was watching the sky - which, believe me, isn't a normal thing for a six year old boy to do at his mother's funeral.

That was all that I perceived about him during that particular occurrence. Not the dark bags under his soft blue eyes. Not the way he stood apart from the rest of his family as if he was a hair’s breadth away from fleeing into the nearby wooded area. Not even how he had his hands clasped together tightly in front of him as he repeatedly ran his thumb over his knuckles to soothe himself.

I certainly did see those things, eventually, though - but the lethal feelings that accompanied those realizations didn’t have a chance to taint this first sight.

Something I’ve noticed about humans is that they generally only bother to observe the colors of the day at the beginnings and ends, which is odd to me, since there are colors all day long. A single hour can consist of a multitude of shades and intonations. Yellows, blues, blacks, passing fluffs of white or grey. Sometimes it’s clear and bright, other times it’s murky darkness - and most often it’s a mixture of the two.

In my line of work, I make it a point to notice the colors. It keeps me sane. It helps me cope by giving me a temporary distraction from the worst part of my job: the leftover humans. The survivors. They’re the ones I can’t stand to look at, who are always there in a devastating jigsaw puzzle of denial, anguish, and desperation.

The only reason I can think of for why I happened to notice Peter that evening was that he was doing the same thing, looking up at the waxy yellow sky while everyone else was crumbling around his mother’s body on the ground. My eyes instinctively flitted to the odd person out - since, no matter how desperately I try, I can’t always keep my eyes on the sky.

Something about him just touched me in a way I hadn't experienced before. That little boy, eyes turned up to those slow-moving clouds, elicited a feeling so captivating and familiar that I had to pause for a moment with Nellie Hale's soul cradled against my chest, just to watch him. He stirred something in the deepest recesses of my heart that was too warm for comfort, too foreign to even hope to understand then.

As I carried the Hale Matriarch's soul away, I couldn’t help but wonder when the next time I would see him would be. If he’d keep watching the sky.

I felt the slight tingle of the atmosphere shifting against my skin as I crossed into The Between, stepping from green grass into the black carpeted floor of my living room. Paige was there as she usually was, sprawled across the dark suede couch as she awaited my return.

There really wasn’t much to do, when you didn’t have to eat or sleep, and time wasn’t an issue.

Time was a human concept - it held no significance in The Between. I simply wandered around the mansion, spoke to Paige, read, rested - until the incessant pull of a particular soul would get too demanding. When I passed through the barrier, I stepped into whichever year and place I was needed. I wasn't sure how it worked exactly, but it didn't matter much.

I did my job, and I did it well. Not that there was an alternative to compare myself to - but I liked to think that I was sufficient at the one thing I was created for.

“For you,” I told Paige, offering her the softly glowing orb in my palm. She sat up and scooped it carefully into her hands. It immediately flared brighter as her phoenix light began burning through the sins and hardship that the human realm had inflicted upon it. 

“What’s wrong?” Paige looked up at me.

Nothing. Everything. “I met a human.”

“You _met_ one?” She asked, eyebrows shooting towards her hairline.

“Well, no...I saw one.”

She squinted confusedly for a moment, before asking, “Don’t you always?”

“I never try to,” I sighed. “But there was a little boy and he just...there was something different about him.”

“Different how? He wasn’t a harbinger of yours?”

“No.” I rolled my eyes as I fell onto the couch beside her. “Banshees aren’t male.”

“They could be, if he was transgender.”

I didn’t really have an argument for that, since she wasn’t wrong, so I just repeated, “He wasn’t a harbinger. There was no reason for me to be drawn to him, but I just...there was _something_. He was watching the sky.”

Paige laughed. “A lot of humans do...you haven’t noticed?”

She didn’t understand.

“No, I think he was watching it like _I_ do. To...to avoid them.”

“Ah, your leftover humans.” Paige shook her head in a way that felt rather condescending, much to my annoyance. “Or, you know, maybe he was just praying to whatever God the humans felt inclined to believe at that time. That’s a common thing to do.”

I had seen millions of humans praying, but Peter Hale was not. He was escaping. He was avoiding. He was _coping_. 

“You’re probably right,” I told her anyway.

I knew that no matter how valiantly I tried to explain, she could never understand. It was hard for someone created and surrounded by light to understand the dark.

Paige looked down at the soul affectionately as it finished purifying - which I couldn’t really understand, after an eternity of doing this. When they were recharged, they were so _bright_ and _warm_ and it made my skin crawl. I worked best with the dim ones - but perhaps it was just my nature to shy away from the light.

My sister and I had a much different view on life, no matter how many conversations I had with her on the topic. Maybe it was just because we saw different sides of it. She saw the family crying with joy at the new life joining them, while I was surrounded by the leftover humans every time I crossed into their realm. I carried the deteriorated remains of the soul that had finally been able to escape, and then watched as Paige threw it back into the vicious cycle.

Two sides of the same coin, two flames of the same fire.

Despite the fact that Paige and I could not exist without the other - for what lives must die, and what dies must have lived - I would never understand her, and she would never understand me.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven’t seen any Teen Wolf fics with a universe quite like this one, which might mean that nobody is interested in it...I kinda wrote this on a middle-of-the-night impulse, so if you guys hate it, we can just pretend it didn’t happen. I wasn't even going to post it, but screw it. Also, I never write in first person POV and have never attempted this type of narration, so if it sucks, it’s because I'm trying something new and have no idea what I'm doing.
> 
> BUT, if you happened to enjoy it, please let me know!
> 
> (PS- It’s been like five years since I’ve read The Book Thief and I’m still obsessed with the idea of Death as a narrator. If you’re familiar with it, you probably noticed/will notice some borrowed lines lol)


End file.
